support, help, more education, more skills in order to survive in the current economy. atwatch "afterwards" sunday 9:00 p.m. eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> now, more from the texas tribune festival in austin. a discussion on the state of american politics today. we begin with a conversation with democratic presidential candidate governor steve bullock of montana. this is one hour 15 minutes. [applause] >> let's get the show started. i think you're clapping for the governor.

i'm the senior editor at politico in washington, d.c.. i think you might be able to hear me now? let's check this thing on the side. any better now? ok, let's do it. how's that now? better? good. good. we are going to do it. thank you for the feedback, that's the sort of participation we want over the next 80 minutes, you might be able to tell from my accent i'm not from around here. we are looking at how we can solve problems and fix america's political system, apparently it is still broken and they need an australian here. but we have just meant to tell us how to fix us -- it's governor steve bullock. he will join me for the first 20 minutes.

we have a panel of distinguished guests and we will go into the details of working in pie-in-the-sky ideas of how we are going to fix american politics. as an outsider, before we get started, feel free to try some innovations like not talking about impeachment for 20 minutes. we are going to talk about some real ideas over the course of the next 80 minutes. and we would love your participation, use #tribfest19 if you would like to throw some ideas my way. and i want to thank our sponsors at the politico tent. let's get into the discussion , governor. you are the governor from montana, also a presidential candidate for 2020. you contributed an idea to our politico magazine issue around the idea of campaign finance, if you were elected president, from

day one you would issue an executive order that required anyone wanting to do business with the federal government to disclose all of their corporate donations. you would push for a disclose act and bring all dark money out into the open. that is something you have had a long track record working on, including on the citizens united case from your time in politics in montana. so it sounds like you want some big structural changes. tell us about that, and is this the sort of structural change we see from your competitors like bernie sanders and elizabeth warren? gov. bullock: thank you. it's not because it's knowing in montana that i'm happy to be here. when you look at the challenges we have in this country, it comes back to money. i thought you were already giving me the bell off. it comes back to money in politics. when lindsey graham says we have to get this tax cut through to make donors happy, 44% of

americans would not have $400 in their pocket in case of an emergency. we pay more for prescription drugs of any other country in the world and they are pretty active. generations of workers are placed by independent con tractors and union membership is half of what it was in the 1980's. oil companies are doing well, the republican party is the only major political party in the world that no longer acknowledges that climate change is real. we have to take steps if we are ever going to get washington, d.c. to work again, to at least kick the dark money out of our system. prior to citizens united, it equated money with speech and corporations with people. 2% of the spending of outside groups were from groups that don't disclose their donors. this last midterm election it was over half. at the end of the day this is what drives the political system. i was in attorney general before i was a governor and i wrote the brief that the majority of

states signed on, saying it should not be corporations behind these, because montana has this long history that we may or may not get into, it ought to be about people. we took the case to the u.s. supreme court, taking on citizens united and we lost on a 5-4 decision, right now it taught me to never underestimate what one justice can do. workers rights, women's right, environmental protections. but also something about not giving up on something important. we pass this law, with a two thirds republican legislature that says i don't care if you call yourself americans for america for americans whatever it is, for the last 90 days you have to disclose all of your spending in our elections. i'm up for reelection in 2016, the koch brothers did such a good job and they even showed up and they said are you really that much of a creep? and on day 90 it stopped.

we kicked them out of montana, you ought to be able to kick them out of texas. >> let's follow-up there. you kicked the koch brothers out and foreign donors out of montana. what was the actual effect of that? gov. bullock: the actual effect, if there's one day every two years where we are all equal, and that's on election day. and more more people are not participating because they think their vote doesn't matter. what it did is that it made it much more about the candidate and the campaigns than the outside spending groups who aren't disclosing their money. and as the only state in the country, until we can get rid of citizens united i cannot necessarily change that. but here's something simple. if you want to contract with the state of montana i cannot tell you you cannot spend in our

election but you have to disclose every single way that you are contributing to influence our election. think of the federal government did that. every company in this country is contracting with the federal government. we ought to know who is do the sponsoring. >> you're on the frontlines of the presidential campaign, what is something you would change about the system if you could rewrite the culture or the rules. as an australian, i'm looking at a two year long election campaign compared to six weeks and i think that's nuts. what would you do. gov. bullock: i think that's nuts. but it's also awesome because of the recognition, a poll came out, 9% of the people in the country have made up their mind who they will vote for on the democratic side. iowa is still four months away, the early states always take a big deal and make it small. 80% of the folks said they are not committed.

so i don't think the unending campaign does anything constructive for representative democracy. it's difficult in ways to limit that, we will talk about that in the upcoming weeks, but it is one where elections still are about a connection with people and people talking to people. i was the only democrat in the country to get reelected where trump won. he took montana by 20 and i won by four. 25 to 30% of my voters voted for donald trump and is not because i, god forbid, acted like trump. people believe that i listened to them, i respected them, they might not agree with me on all issues but i would be doing the job. you look at these debates, what's really coming out of it? it's more trying to get your moment. >> the next round of debates in october, 12 candidates it looks like on stage, that sounds like a version of hell.

are you sad to be missing that debate or do you want to be on that stage? gov. bullock: for the continued national exposure i would love to be on it. i did not get in until may because i still had a job to do. my legislature was meeting we had to get medicaid expansion reauthorize. i think the dnc's intentions were well, they want to make sure that we are not the party of big donors. but by putting in the stoner threshold requirement candidates are spending 60% to 80% percent of their dollars on google ads to get a one dollar donor. >> are you doing that or did you decide to skip that? gov. bullock: i decided it was more important to invest in places like iowa with field staff than to play the dnc debate game. i think it's a sad state of affairs when we are less inclusive when it comes to debates than the republican party ever was, and if our premium is chasing donors is more important then saving

health care, something is wrong. but we are a long way from the election. everyone is gonna pay attention, but voters will just start tuning and now. >> what would be a fair system, in your mind, or a fair set of criteria for who is going to have a chance to revise that. gov. bullock: on the one hand, the only governor left in this race, the one who has one in a trump state and has taken on dark money, that stage is missing something by not having me on it. the republicans, all the way into 2016, there threshold was a 1% polling threshold. that's probably much more reasonable. it should not be national parties and stuff that actually take a big field and make it smaller. i will be damned if it's not voters who do that.

>> you know how to win an trump country, let's poke into that. your strengths are your governing experience, and there's an argument about electability. i want to ask what's the difference between what works and montana in terms of winning people over in the center, and in the suburbs of milwaukee and detroit and tampa because those are not the same places and people don't all have the same concerns. how are you going to win those counties? gov. bullock: they don't have the same concerns. but a couple things, this election is really about math. we have to get 270 electoral votes. we could run up the numbers in california by 3 million, if we can't win in michigan, wisconsin, or pennsylvania, we will not win. the way i have one in montana, the fourth-largest data in the country, i don't have the luxury of going to those pockets of lou. i have to go across states, listen, engage, and hear what people want and make them believe that government can impact those ways.

i begin from the base presumption, whether you or someone from milwaukee or montana, the values that most people have, we have these great political divides, but the values people have, most lives are too frantic and busy to care about politics but they want a safe community, a roof over their head, decent jobs, clean air and clean water, good public schools. and that the generation after you can do better than your generation. when 60% of people have not had a real pay increase in 40 years, two thirds of the counties in this country lost business over the last decade, they are saying those values that i hold are not being reflected by washington, d.c. certainly not reflect by the republican party. there's even a disconnect in the democrat party. >> what would you say distinguishes you from some of the other candidates in the field? we hear a lot about people being

in certain lanes or being very liberal and moderate. is it about the promises you are making, where you think you're promises really can be kept versus others that are more elaborate? or some other distinction? gov. bullock: a couple of things. at the core of the word progressive is making progress. i put my record on health care, education, kicking dark money out of elections, against anybody in this field. as a governor you bring in a different perspective. you have to get stuff done. i have won three elections in a red state as a pro-choice, prounion, populist democrat. i think washington has become a place where talking has become the substitute of doing. being off the coast helps. here you are in texas, we have 22 states in the country that are controlled both state houses and the governor's by republicans. if we cannot compete across

texas, just like this country, there's a long-term viability that we are improving health care, improving education, making sure that there's equality and it becomes more challenging. >> here's a leadership test. we love tests at politico one test is in an electoral system that rewards parties and candidates playing to their base, telling voters what they want to hear, rather than what we need to hear, my challenge to you is to name one thing that you believe in personally that you know is not popular nationally that you think needs to be issued. you are on the side of x but it does not have a 60% rating nationally. saying we need to do this and i'm going to bring on the journey. gov. bullock: the way i have done things in montana is to

think about what's best in the long term. let's talk about climate change. we have to address climate change. we have to recognize that our fire season is 78 days longer. but often you have people who have spent their whole life powering this country. people in the fossil fuel industry and so on, democrat sound like they are part of the problem. we cannot leave communities behind along the way. we have to let science guide this. there are times when i have stood up and said let's figure out the best way to make sure we have universal pre-k for everyone. not everyone in my party even agrees with the way that i get there. but i think the test of leadership is trying to say we have to bridge these divides. i think the greatest issue confronting us today, the biggest problem we have is actually ourselves. when we are united as a country, we can deal with anything.

but it's really the deep political divisions -- forget about twitter and facebook, think about thanksgiving dinners where politics divide us, i think we have to find more commonality. >> hopefully this question is not seem impertinent, -- gov. bullock: i do like how you say impertinent. >> on paper you look like the perfect candidate, all those points about you winning an trump country, you had this experience and you are pulling in single digits, what does that say about how politics is being disruptive and how jarring does that feel knowing that you take the boxes but it's a struggle to get the campaign to the point where you are -- gov. bullock: i would much rather be higher at this point, but it's also telling that i'm the only governor left in the field. in part i think that was the d&c debate rules. we are nationalizing -- i just got done of being the chair of the national governors association, i spent 10 years in

political office avoiding cable television, because it's about conflict. but we really are nationalizing all of this. barack obama is the first term senator, the last senator that we nominated before that was john f. kennedy. because governors have to govern and get stuff done. it's a challenge in the system right now, but i think it's also that it's now -- politics is bloodsport and a 24 hour engagement. if you watch anything on television, and at the end of the day, what continues to give me hope is that it is still voters -- it's still a long time away from now before we are even dealing with most of our primary states. >> i think we have learned this week that a week is a long time. so let's turn to the inevitable impeachment inquiry.

do you support the impeachment inquiry knowing what we now know about trump's dealings with ukraine? gov. bullock: prior to this past week i said no, because i don't want to make the next 14 months about donald trump. and it struck me that in 60 some meet and greets in iowa, they brought up health care, no one raised any questions about impeachment. this last week the -- the idea of withholding foreign money and saying to a president that you have to do us a favor, directing the ukrainian president to start working with the ag and a personal lawyer, trying to cover this up. i don't think it's necessarily good politics, but for the good of our country i think we have to do it. >> so as a lawyer in addition to being a candidate -- gov. bullock: we have to do it.

and there's a third of this country that will just look at this and say, no matter what, this is just something to take down trump. what we have to do, we have to be judicious in going forward. because how we do this impeachment proceeding and how we run this race, at some point we have to deal with the fact of how fractured this country is, and we cannot feed into that through this process. >> i guess that's an argument to say effectively that if trump came in at the ballot box he would prefer him to be removed at the ballot box. gov. bullock: i absolutely would, but this has been a great 240 year experiment called representative democracy and i don't want it to be completely dismantled by the abuse of power and what he is normalizing. >> a few final questions because we have a great panel, would you like to get your hands on the transcript of these conversations with the saudi crown prince and putin? >> it would be good from the

perspective to know exactly what all else he's either been promising or suggesting to other countries. >> should really giuliani be prosecutor, knowing what we know about his involvement? gov. bullock: we have to finish of the inquiry to know what he has done, but this is one where nobody should be immune from prosecution or the law. >> governor bullock, thank you for your time. gov. bullock: thank you. [applause] >> for part two i would like to welcome onto the stage our panelists, we have four.

let these guys get seated before we do our introductions. let me say what we are doing at politico magazine that brought this panel into existence. and the point i want to make is that we are freethinkers at politico, i hope you can still hear me. is that better? good. we are a little more contrarian, bolder than some outlets, and we are specifically nonpartisan. that feels like a novelty in 2019, and our panelists come from a group of around 80 who have contributive ideas on how to fix american politics. there are about a hundred up there on politico.com

they range from mandatory civics education to making the house of congress virtual and we have arguments for and against raising the salaries of politicians. there's a lot to chew through. and for what it's worth, i'm from two countries, australia and belgium, both with compulsory voting. you have more than 90% of people turning out to vote. in australia you could be fined for not voting. it sounds extreme but one of the effects is that it forces all of the candidates to appeal to all voters, they cannot just appeal to the most partisan people in the system. let's introduce our panelists, i'm going to turn to you for questions as well. we have a microphone in this session. ellen weintraub is the chair of

the u.s. federal election commission, we had the codirector of duke university's center on law, race, and politics, next to me is margaret spelling, the education secretary in the george w. bush administration and now running texas 2036, and i did not mean to skip over you, i just wrote out differently. she was the domestic policy director in the obama administration. around of applause for the panel. [applause] alan, i'm going to you first, i'm going to pick on you and i'm sorry about that. but it's your job to help american democracy and elections exist on a fair and level playing field and to make sure that things are healthy on that

front. one of your big ideas is that we need to go back to basics, and overturn a ruling from 1976 that was supercharged by the citizens united ruling, it's about how do we get a lot of the money out of politics. i want to hear about that, but it's also access issues as well. do you feel, at the fec, that you have the resources and the tools and the people you need, even the commissioners, to actually discharge her duties and to enforce against people who are breaking the rules. >> is this working, am i on? we have a big problem at the fec right now, we don't have enough commissioners. this is basic. we have a decent budget, we could use more, i would like to have more money for enforcement because i don't think we are doing a vigorous job or as timely a job as we need to of enforcing the law and we need more bodies in our enforcement division so we can move those quicker.

but the biggest problem right now is by law most decisions have to be made by a vote of four commissioners and we have three. so we can't do much of anything in terms of making decisions on whether people have violated the law, offering advice if somebody has a great new idea on how they want to run their campaign or make sure that they understand that it's ok under the law, we cannot answer questions right now. we can't write new regulations. the rulemaking process has been stalled due to my colleagues and willingness to actually bring it home that would get better information to the american people about the information you are getting online. and advertising you are seeing on the internet. we need better and stronger rules and bring rules up-to-date for the digital age because right now there are statutes that apply to broadcast ads but not digital ads. there's a lot more we could do if we had actual commissioners

on board. right now we don't. >> a quick follow-up, if you have not followed ellen on twitter, she went viral in the last 24 hours. it's a little hard to slain in detail but maybe i just need you to go online and look at that. but one of your republican commissioner politics but you are operating in this great space and it's helpful, and in an effort to block the sharing of that information about foreign nationals and what's prohibited in relations to their involvement in election and they just kind of blew out the scene, is this really what you are reduced to now, that you have to go on twitter in order to share this information. >> last week i put out a draft policy, if we had enough

commissioners we could have done that. it clearly summarize what the fec said over the years about the foreign national intervention and what is a thing of value. this is an area where some guidance would be really useful and would help inform the public debate. i know that we cannot adopt it right now, but i thought the summary would be useful. the normal thing we do every week is that we put out a digest of what's going on at the fec and it includes the commissioners statements. and my colleague said not that one, you cannot put that in the digest. what do you mean i cannot put that in the digest i don't need your permission to put out a statement. so i said ok, fine, if you don't want me to put it in the digest i'm going to tweet the digest myself because you're blocking the information from getting out there. so i tweeted out the digest,

with the story of why i had to do that, because my colleague was trying to block me from putting out a policy statement. a lot of people picked it up on twitter. [applause] it's all about transparency and free speech, right? >> we love innovation and politics. >> and the idea you proposed to us was to confer a positive constitutional right to vote. and your point, if i understood it correctly was that while there are some voting protections in the constitution, there's nothing absolute and clear-cut. means people have the margins to go over hurdles and other limits for how voting takes place. there most familiar with polling.

would the amendment really deter the people who want to put in limits and hurdles, and how much will it take to get the ball rolling on that constitutional amendment? >> let me read a statement to you. every adult citizen has the right to vote in elections for any legislative body. if you were to guess the statement was part of the south african constitution, you would be correct. there is no equivalent to the u.s. constitution that says if you are a citizen, you are entitled to vote. the constitutional structure depends upon the states to the voting protections of and their state constitutions, and to carry out the voting, which is one of the reasons why when we go to vote, the voting is conducted by many people who are not professionals engaged in the act of voting.

one result of the process we had our laws that have been enacted, some for race reasons, others for partisan reasons, others because want people want to minimize the participation by some groups, some members of a particular social demographic. people want to win. there is nothing in the constitution that says voting is a fundamental right, and when your government tries to make it harder, it is a problem. similar to when the government tries to restrict speech under the first amendment. the government tries to restrict your speech commute can file a lawsuit under the first amendment to say, that is a fundamental right, you cannot restrict my speech. we do not have that equivalent with voting, so my idea is, let's begin with the basics. let's begin with the basics or the ground rules of the game, where we can all agree and we should agree, that every citizen

ought to have a basic right to vote in the same way that every citizen has a basic right to the first amendment free-speech. if we were to have that, that would make it so much easier for citizens to protect their rights, and for the government to pass laws, like voter id laws or other types of registration barriers that makes it harder for citizens to vote. yes, i think that could be effective, but it is going to take a long-term process. first, people need to be educated about what is and is not in the constitution, and second, they must get on board to get there governments, state governments and congress, to begin to think about voting as a fundamental right and not a privilege. ryan: i have a tricky follow-up for you. so having an automatic right to vote, would that require an automatic right to representation? let me explain. we have a situation that i think is strange, you have about 5

million american citizens who do not really have the right to representation in congress. that is bound up with other issues about, we do expand the number of senators, the number of congresspeople and so on, but would you also mean any american citizen would be entitled to representation as well, once they have the right to vote? guy: if we were to amend the constitution, just to be clear on what we are talking about, if you live in washington, d.c., or puerto rico, you are an american citizen but you do not have the same voting rights that other people who live in the mainland or live in other parts of the country, which is a very strange and bizarre situation. now, the reason is is because we have a constitution that was adopted a long time ago in which voting participation was a thought about differently. we had at the time property qualifications, gender

qualifications, literacy qualifications, poll taxes and the different things that restricted voting to a small group of people. currently, we have different ideas about voting and present -- and participation, but we are stuck with a 17th-century model. so the question for us is how do we bring our constitutional structure in line with our modern conception of voting and political purchase patient? that would mean amending the constitution to lecture -- assure all citizens have rights to purchase or pay at the very least international elections. -- in national elections. ryan: the last time the constitution was amended was a 1992, it was the result of an undergrad at ut who wrote a paper in the early 1980's about a constitutional amendment, one

opposed in 1789, and it does not have much effect but it is about limiting the right of congress to vote for a pay increase. he got the ball rolling. and at the 38 states ratified it. and then the 27th mm it was adopted. -- 27th amendment was adopted. one of you could be the generator of the next constitutional amendment, it would make guy happy. cecilia, you also had a bridge is a patient idea for the magazine. and i think it was about making policy more user generated and learning from the tech world about how they have been so successful in engaging young people, who do not have the strongest relationship with their federal government. cecilia: exactly. i worked for a democratic president, but my idea is not a partisan idea. if we ever have to interact with our government to say, like do something simple like replacing social security card, you approach the process with the dread because the government is

not effective at delivering what it needs to deliver. it is easier to buy a pair of shoes on your phone then it is to do most government processes, and there is no reason for that to be true. in the u.s., we invented the tools that folks in the silicon valley use get inside our heads, to engage with us, because they want us to be using the things they invent. they are figuring out the things none of us can live without in a couple weeks. by engaging their users in the design of their products. my idea, the thing i work at in an organization in washington, is the use those processes to make sure that government delivers more effectively. even the most effective policy that we have all agreed on, that has bipartisan support and already in the law, like the earned income tax credit, one of the most effective ways to lift people out of poverty, but when

-- 20% of the people who are eligible for this do not use it. we have been treating that as an outreach problem forever. and it is not just an outreach problem, it is a design problem. paid leave in california, we won that battle in california, but less than half of the people who are eligible for paid leave take advantage of the law. that is not just an outreach problem. my organization is working with new jersey, they just passed a paid leave law, and they are doing a tech oriented deep dive with the people who we want accessing paid leave, to engage them in designing how the law will function, how they will access it so we have fewer crazy bureaucratic processes and more streamlined processes. one other things that will keep faith in the democracy is the big intervention, the big policy

interventions, that we agree upon and get enacted that we do our utmost to make sure they deliver at maximum for the american people. ryan: my follow-up is, having had worked in europe, the european union really struggles to engage citizens, citizens feel like it is so far removed from their daily lives and today struggle to have that ongoing relationship with citizens. it strikes me that the things you are talking about standing better chance of working at the local and state level, where it is easier to build a community and have feedback, or maybe it is going to work for a specific service delivery, but in the broader policy topics, like the big existential challenge of climate change, do you feel like these processes and techniques can work on those big levels? cecilia: some of the most effective policies started as a local initiatives.

my ceo is a big believer in what she calls american renewal. that we forget that they are good people all across the country solving our public problems all the time, not in a partisan way, but in a common sense, we have a problem and we need to fix it kind of way. one of the ideas is the big policy interventions we will fight the political fight over, that they should start as local initiatives. we should test them and prove they work. then start small and local and then build up from there and we ultimately stand a chance of being much more effective. when we work with a network of folks working on homelessness, for example, they started in communities where instead of trying to change big systems, they decided to make a list of the homeless people and then work the list to make sure that individual by individual they were getting what they needed in order to get out of homelessness. they drove homelessness down to functional zero in nine communities.

none of the problems that we face are intractable problems. we have innovators moet have the -- we have the capacity to solve these problems and we are doing it all the time, but we need innovations and we need to make sure we measure them, test them, engage people in designing them, then take it to scale. ryan: so margaret, our local voice on the panel, you are running an organization on long-term thinking and i think that would butt up against our short-term electoral cycles. one of your big challenges is marrying those conversations. margaret: that is the point. we at texas 2036, it is the 200th birthday of the republic of texas, it is our bicentennial. and we believe that our policymakers often, you know, often responsibly, because they are dealing with a hurricane or whatever, they deal with the tyranny of the urgent and are

not thinking long-term about those most important things. we do not have the right planning or the right kind of interactions and use of data that cecilia is talking about, so that we can set priorities and deploy resources in a way that is fact-based, databased, andractive with our people, charting a course over a long period of time. you,mend our database to we are the laboratory of democracy. we are absolutely in the era of local control. i am not looking to the federal government much these days to help us solve our problems, whether it is education, homelessness or you name it. ryan: i just came from new york city, where the united nations was having its annual general meetings, and what struck me now is the level of local activity toward these big global goals that the united nations has a

set. i was talking to the international affairs commissioner for new york, and she said, new york city alone is bigger than 141 of the countries that are in the united nations. so if we are not sort of activating toward these things , if we are not mobilizing what we have is a community, then those bigger things are never going to be achieved. or if we wait for the federal government, it will not work. i guess there is a big voluntary movement here on that as well. margaret: what we are doing, and if i had to put it on a bumper sticker, i would say we are trying to put sensible folks together to think long-term about the most important things. i commend colleagues and friends and all of these various bathrooms, abortions, guns, this and that, because they have built demand from policymakers to respond to those issues right now. and recently, leaders have failed to build that same kind

of demand to think long-term about those important issues of natural resources, education, health and so on, so we are putting civic leaders and others together to help us build that demand. ryan: it is time to turn to some questions in the audience. the gentleman here in the beautiful tie-dyed t-shirt. we will bring a microphone to you. yes. a lady coming down from the end, hang on a second. i have a quick question. one of the other ideas we heard was you could move election day to veterans day, so that there would be an easier engagement for people who are working, people stuck in the snow and so on when it comes to the presidential election. i won't force you to stick your hand up to say yes or no, but any reactions to that idea? it seems like a logical way. >> i am happy to stick my hand up for that. we are unique amongst the world in having our elections on a

working day. everywhere else, they have elections on the weekend, when people are not working, so they can go to the polls. we have this historical artifact that we do it on a workday. the move to move it to veterans day was so we would not need to add an extra federal holiday. take one in the same neighborhood and use it for election day, that is a great idea. guy: what i would say is i think it is a good idea, but i will add automatic voter registration. that would make a huge deal. and we know that in states in which voters are automatically registered, the participation is higher. ryan: linking it to your drivers license or another state id. guy: that is right. if we combine these ideas, we can make it easier for people to vote. margaret: i would love to become the country where we are pulling out all stops to make sure that

everybody participates, rather than enacting policies and acting in ways to keep people away from the ballot box. ryan: it was republican women who first proposed this idea and now mitch mcconnell defines it as a power grab, what is your take? margaret: i will not comment on mitch mcconnell, i am all about the state of texas. in our last election, 41% of registered voters turned out. so anything we can do. as a university president, i know about the struggles we have with getting polling places on college campuses. to the point you were making, it is real. people are trying to thwart this stuff. we should be beyond that. ryan: we have the microphone over here to this young man. and say who you are, if you are representing anyone? and we all want that shirt. >> my name is caleb. i have been in texas my whole life.

thank you for allowing us to ask a question. my question is directed toward ellen about election funding. at the last debate, if you watched the democratic debate, andrew yang proposed a democracy dollar idea, giving out free money in theory to americans to put the money toward whatever elections they support and it would be a way to flood out some of the corrupt money coming into politics. what would the opinion beyond democracy dollars, is that a valid concept to give people the ability to donate to campaigns they want to, public funding for campaigns i guess? ellen: there have been public funding programs. i am in favor of public funding. i do not want to comment on any particular candidate's program, but there is a program in seattle where the local level they give every seattlean $100 to divide amongst which candidates they want. the advantage is it completely shifts the incentives of the

candidates, whereas before they may not have an incentive to go into certain neighborhoods and campaign there and try to reach out and figure out what those people want, because they either did not have money to give, or they were not high turnout voters. now they have the incentive to appeal to every single person in the jurisdiction. it has been working really well. and i think it is a great idea. >> i have a follow-up. on every single person's tax return, i do taxes for a living, there is a little checkbox, it is three dollars for a campaign fund. nine out of 10 people do not know about it, and the one out of 10 decide yes or no, because none of it is taking any tax money, it is just applying it to a find. can that be an education issue to tell people we have that thing, and people do not use it, or what would be your thoughts on that? ellen: the problem with the presidential public funding system is the candidates are not using it anymore because it has

not been updated in decades. it is a caret and a stick approach. the idea was you take public funding and in return for which you accept spending limits. if you only take private money, you do not have the spending limits. the way things are going, candidates are able to raise so much more money than they could get out of the public funding system that they would be foolish to opt into it. what we need to do, and there are proposals, is to modernize our public funding system, not only to make it so that more people know about it in the general population, but make it more appealing to candidates, probably something that would not come with spending limits, may be something modeled after new york city and what they do with -- i think it is a six to one match. to empower small donors and make it more incentivized for candidates to get out and talk to everybody, not just rich donors. in the 2018 election, of the

money we know about, not the dark money, but disclose the money there were 126 individuals or couples who gave over $1 million. there were 12 or 13 individuals or couples that gave over $10 million. there was one couple that gave over $100 million. who do you think politicians are going to pick up the phone and talk to when you have people who are playing in that field, giving millions of dollars, and even the dark money donors, the politicians know who they are. money drives policy. the money drives who gets elected and what gets enacted. that is why we need to go back to basics and rethink our money and politics system, it is not the way that most countries do it. [applause] ryan: is that in congress, where the problem in updating the public funding needs to be? ellen: it is a congressional problem, but there are bills in congress --

ryan: are they just sitting there? ellen: some have been voted on in the house, but they cannot go through the senate. ryan: we have a lady in the front. >> thank you for your time. ryan: we will bring the microphone here. i apologize about my range of view. i am being biased to those in front of me. >> i am kathy. >> minnesota had this. when you look at the check offs at the beginning, there is a high rate of participation, but then over time it falls off, so i think that early on these are great devices for including more people, but fundamentally we may have to rethink what we do with public funding of campaigns, because it starts out relatively high, but then there are quick drop-offs over time. >> my question, i have one for the professor and one for ellen. professor, the equal rights amendment needs to be passed.

is there anyway you can write your proposal into the equal rights amendment and sweep it in? and then for ellen, can you explain why to the audience you cannot get that fourth commissioner? we would like you to vocalize why you cannot get that fourth commissioner. guy: one of the drawbacks to my proposal, this was alluded to earlier, is it is extremely difficult to amend the u.s. constitution. so part of the purpose of what i am trying to do is not just practically think about amending the constitution, but to really begin a conversation about the importance of voting and political participation for it to become a part of our national culture. so there are a couple ways of having change in the american system, obviously one way is through amending the document that is hard to amend, but also

change the culture. i think that the goal around voting, and we are seeing that , we are seeing people caring a lot more about voting and political participation than we ever did. we are beginning to change the culture, that is one reason i am optimistic about the future, even though my proposal may get stalled. in the same way that the dra got stalled. ryan: margaret? margaret: that is why these databased approaches like we are doing in texas, we need to call that out. people do not know that there are dozens of unfilled vacancies in the senate approved roles. the machinery of government is stalling out because a lot of jobs have not been filled. when that happens, and we will do this in texas, we need to tell people about it. ellen: the federal election commission is supposed to have six members, no more than three

can be of any one political party. a couple years ago, one of my democratic colleagues resigned and that spot is still not filled. a year and a half ago, one of my republican colleagues resigned and that spot was not filled. one month ago, and i had less of a week's notice and that this would happen, another republican colleagues resigned and then we got down under four. why have they not been replaced? i do not know. the commissioner has to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate and it has not happened. ryan: we have seen that the wto as well. i need to do the fact check as a journalist. the administration has been starving the appellate judges from that body so it does not function, so i cannot speak to the motivation, but i can see a pattern. the gentleman in the green shirt.

>> hi. my name is zach and i am a sophomore at american university. what is the number one thing that federal, state, and municipal governments can do to ensure election security in the 2020 election? ryan: i will give cecelia the first chance to respond. you don't have to, but you have the first right of refusal. cecilia: i want to hear what ellen has to say. ellen: i do not know what the first thing is, but i believe that elections are managed at the state and local level, so we do not have authority over how the elections -- the ballots get tabulated or people get registered. that is happening at the state and local level. it is my understanding that the state and local officials are working with homeland security in order to try to prevent cyber attacks, which is a huge concern. i think we do not have enough resources.

congress needs to allocate more resources to them in order to protect themselves. that would probably be my number one ask in congress, they just allocated another $250 million, but it is a drop in the bucket. we have local communities, county governments, who are going up against the russian secret service in terms of trying to prevent the hacking of their systems. it is not a fair fight. cecilia: there are models and estates that have taken these on. and there are models on how to do it. it is not just a question of money. it is also a question of will. i would build on the answer to say that the most difficult thing that we have to do at every level is make sure we are ensuring the integrity of elections, and there are steps that can be taken, but it requires saying out loud that we have something weproblem and we

need to protect ourselves against. ellen: let me out one other thought. we need to make sure that at the state and local levels there are enough locations for people to vote. they are spread out so every community has the same opportunity. we don't see a lot of polling stations in one neighborhood, and not so many in other neighborhoods. this needs to be a fairly administered election. the first thing is to think of election security now as a national security matter. just to underscore something that ellen said, elections are very decentralized. lyey are also part administered. there is an unevenness at the state and local level for expertise. we have a structure in place. we have a structure in place that is from the 18th century that is trying to deal with 21st-century problems.

the question is, how can we moved to respond to 21st-century concerns, cyber attacks any decentralized world with part administration of some elections and very low mark eves. we began to think of elections as a national security problem and not just the question of state administrations. margaret: i think there is broad bipartisan agreement around the integrity of the ballot box. if we cannot work together, even as a coalition of state and think well tos, i us. >> to throw in global context, you have real upside than downsides as it functions in the u.s. compared to the country where i electionn, the federal commission does everything related to federal elections. the ballot paper looks the same except for the names of the candidate. whatever constituency you are

going in. i could walk into any ballot station, polling place around australia and get the one from my constituency. at some level it is really functional when you have this overall -- overarching centralize system. it is easier to hack a single system. in the european union they have the elections were 28 people voted at the same time. it is a lot harder for rush or any other state to get into 28 different systems at once. the fact that there is a patchwork is not necessarily bad. at the same time, i had a great experiment at a conference where the u.s. voting machine. >> shame on you. >> it was not in an election. i am a good guy. i did computer classes when i was 14 years old in grade school. if i could figure it out, pretty sure does not take the russian secret service to figure it out.

advocating for the trump administration to take over our election? advocate as a politician -- sorry, my ceo will murder me. he is laughing. it's all right. it make any specific policy recommendation as a journalist, you have to know the pluses and minuses, and it is surprising that there is such a patchwork. you would imagine that with the fec or any other organization, there could be more practice guidance. there could be more cooperating by the national governance association, or some other network. >> it has to be said. while i completely believe that this is a matter of bipartisan concern is absolutely true and is heartfelt. it has to be said that in the congress of the united states, that's not how it is approach. theas become a part of

issue. the majority of the senate is resisting to move forward on legislation that could help us deal with election integrity, describing it as a power grab. that is shameful. i think it undercuts the truth of what you say, which is that, people from every political persuasion, especially in a democracy with this kind of diversity, largely agree and must agree that we should be making these decisions together in an honest way. yourhat, putting thoughtless scale by making it harder for people to vote, or by not putting resources on the table to protect the integrity of our elections is unacceptable. [applause] i want to introduce to more ideas and, to other questions in the audience. onn is to get your thoughts how district thing occurs. i know we will not saw that in the next eight or nine minutes,

but that is an example where there are independent redistricting commission as the u.s. is an outlier in that situation. some states are doing it in the u.s. as well. this statistic that gives contacts, even in what is known as a wave elections, like what we had in the midterms of 2018, nine out of 10 districts to a and the same party even if the name changes every now and then. in theot of turnover u.s. system compared to other systems. any bright ideas or any wishes on how we can make these elections more competitive and the districts more independently drawn? we need to move to independent redistricting committees. they are designed along partisan rot -- partisan lines that there's no reason to appeal to the middle.

if you deviate from the most extreme views, you are likely to get primary by somebody please further to the extremes on both sides than you are. we end up with a more polarized government, where the folks who get elected only come from the extreme. not exclusively, but many come from the extreme ends of the party. the only way they can get a head, and they have nothing in common. there is no common ground between them a and the folks on the other side. that's why we cannot get anything done in washington. [applause] >> two things, we have not agreed on the ground rules of the game. that is a fundamental problem. but increasingly we are beginning to agree on the ground rules of the game. increasingly we are beginning to say it is wrong and unfair for a party to draw the line in a way that minimizes political participation and outcomes by the other side. think of this as a basketball

game. if you have home-court advantage and you get the by the referees, we would all view that as fundamentally unfair. even though the u.s. supreme court said, the constitution does not say anything about this, they are wrong. that is for a different debate. the states are moving in that direction. we are seeing greater commonality here. in five, 10that years, independent redistricting commissions will be more of the norm in the u.s. than the exception. i agree with that and i think it is foundational to why we are where we are right and why everybody scratches her head and says, gosh, don't we have better situations on either side of the aisle? it cynical and crafts on either side of the aisle when it happens. the president that i worked for and the president that you work for would agree on the point

that we should have a debate on the basis of ideas and compete on the basis of ideas and not try to rig the system. i guess i would gently describe it as the most out there idea we came across in this collection of ideas of politico magazine. you would return the ratio of representatives back to a george washington and imagined in the late 1700, that was 30 to 40,000 people per representative. if you did that, you would have a congress of 10,900 members today, and it would keep growing. it would have to be a tall border wall if we would not have that continue to grow with that ratio. the idea of ethan zuckerberg tom m.i.t. was that you have make a house a virtual role. you can do that without changing the constitution. i don't know if that is true or not. but i would love to hear the

panel's thoughts and whether you guys think that is on planet mars in terms of how we could operate the congress, or whether that might inject a new range of diversity of backgrounds of people. i don't mean in terms of race, religion, etc., but in terms of life experience. or what the other ups and downs of that sort of pie in the sky idea might be. who wants to jump in? >> i will jump in since i have worked on issues of technologies. of increasingea the number of folks in congress a smaller poolve of people in the house and they represent right now is very interesting and import in and we should be having this conversation. we have change it up over almost 250 years and should not be afraid to do it. at least at this stage we don't yet have a level playing field with respect to access to technology.

until we get there, it is not a foregone conclusion that this would actually democratize. i think we have to be very careful and i think we have learned tough lessons about this. new when a technology is and we understand it to have a democratizing influence, once we get our hands around how we use it and how it becomes used by folks other than us, that there are unintended consequences. facebook was supposed to be ultra democratizing and now we are having it talk about how they have undermined our democracy. this is why engagement of what the tech world would call the user and testing with the user is tremendously important. possible that by adopting technology we bake in an equities only are actually trying to bust them up. margaret: here is my worry. a people business,

it's a relationship business and a leadership business. to are we going to relate leader of over 3000 and who picks. around ourrally president, congressional leaders, governors, mayors. i worry that that gets left on the cutting room floor when we are not in direct conversations with our leaders. one thing folks around washington have bemoaned is the fact that people don't sit down and break bread together anymore. they don't talk to people across the aisle anymore. there is less socializing for a lot of structural problems. my experience, as much as i love twitter, it's not always tweeting at people, emailing people, having conversations that are not face-to-face is not always the best way to have them all civil and engaged and thoughtful conversation. i think there is something that could get lost in a virtual congress. here atd a gentleman

the back, if we could bring the microphone to him. this might be our last question. the had a question about information infrastructure, beyond the voting infrastructure. if you days ago facebook shut down a group, i love america that was a ukrainian pro-russia grew. it had more traffic than buzz feed and usa today. thismeddling in information has not stopped. how can major tech companies, and what should they do -- what should they be doing and what are they doing? >> i think they are doing more than they used to be and not as much as they should be. had a conference on disinformation a couple of weeks ago. the tech companies came, but most were not willing to actually speak out loud in public about what they are doing. there is a problem, just in terms of them getting enough moderators to speak all the languages of the world.

this is a global problem. it is not just here that we see disinformation spread across the globe. some places it's inciting violence. it's a huge problem. we try to tackle the tiniest vice of it at the fec in terms of getting better disclosure information about who's behind what you see online. i could not bring that one home because we cannot get consensus. that was really kind of sad. is an area that calls out for regulation. there have been some bills introduced in congress that could be helpful. the number-one thing that could be helpful armstrong sanctions. congress needs to adopt strong sanctions so other countries will be afraid to interfere with our elections because they will be afraid of what will happen to them. i think that might be a better route than trying to unplug the holes because every time you come up with a solution you are fighting last year's battle. a tech problem at

tech solutions, but there is also an old media problem. part of the question is, where are we going to get reliable information from, especially to vet what we may worry about as unreliable information? i think it is important on the incumbent, the washington post. a lot of our old media, to really be arbiters of epidemic integrity. so when they put out information we can say, it has been vetted, it is nonpartisan. this is information that we can rely upon. because we actually need to figure out who are the people that we can trust. with respect to information, you have to trust somebody. i think there is a new media problem that may or may not be able to be solved. but i think there is an old media question that i think is also fundamentally important that should not be ignored.

>> i agree with all of that, but i also think we should not let new media off the hook. that this conversation has started way too late. while the tech companies are taking steps, i believe they need to be more aggressive. i believe that the time has come for there to be a regulatory framework. in the news, one of the tech companies is going to propose a draft of its own drafted regulations. i'm not sure we should be letting the tech companies do the deciding. is a rolethink there for texas 2036, the league of institutions, the academies, trusted sources that are nonmedia to elevate the debate and the narrative around what the truth is. there.thought to add that is, you get around the thanksgiving table, christmas table and you're talking to different members of your family.

it was a surprise and shock to me to learn of the aftermath of some of the big votes in 2014 that it was a bit traumatic and away the campaigns were conducted. younger generations did not understand what i went through and what our systems were. they do not understand that -- for example, if i wanted something published on politic to editors have to go through that. who are the people that i spoke to? it is not something where you hear something in a court or, click send and it goes out there. it is a proper vetting process. there's a whole generation of people who have not grown up in a media environment where they understand that there are gatekeepers and processes. it's not that young people are not able to smell the air when a fear, but we all underestimate our ability to detect misinformation or otherwise. we all think we are smarter than

we really are in judging this stuff. it's only when you slow down and have a vetting process that you have an appropriate filter. , theve one question gentleman in a blue shirt. we will be quick with a question and click with the answers because you all need some water. thank you for being so patient with us up. . here. >> thank you. my wife says hello. i am a former chief of staff on capitol hill, d.c. capitol hill. one of the things that we always seem to have to face the outside disruptor groups. where they are the ones that are running against people who we are trying to work with or ourselves. they are running people to the left or right of us. for example, we had a number of pieces of legislation working with the other side. we got 80% or 90% of the way there.

and outside disruptor group comes to them and they pull out. or you may get a group that is making you pull out. can you quickly chat about these disruptor groups and what you think we can do about them? >> i am a specialist in immigration policy. 85% is the reason we had plus consensus on how to fix our immigration system. we have not been able to pass an immigration law and the 20 years i have been working on it. that has to do with folks would really intensity of feeling about some aspects of these issues more in a distinct minority, but blow up the legislative process. we got ahe fact that bipartisan bill through the senate in 2013 and we have more house, weotes in the could not get the speaker of the house to bring up the bill because of that phenomenon. it is incredibly disruptive to getting stuff done. >> where are the legitimate lines? where do legitimate holdings

come from? you getrnible] -- >> these fringe groups or outliers and they are piling -- highly influential because of the .lectoral dynamic >> and a lot of these groups are dark money groups. they claim to be americans for funded ofut they are by the pharmaceutical industry, or sometimes they are funded by very wealthy ideologues who are out there trying to push a agenda.ar ideological i think if we had better disclosure of who is behind these groups, police people would be able to hold their elected officials accountable and you could say, why are you taking your marching orders from this cleaner instead of people in your district. [applause] opportunity for final word. >> stronger parties might help. [laughter] toit's on that note we have

wrap up. it has been a productive hour. this is the one of the things i love about america is that you can have these intense discussions and democracy is still functioning at that level. thank you and i appreciate you for coming and joining us. and thank you to our panel. [applause]

[chatter] border it discussion on security and the 2020 elections, from the texas tribune festival in an,